Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Beating the Odds by Blurring the Lines

 The Blind Side (2009) -vs- Hoosiers (1986) 

The Smackdown. We cheer as Eliza Doolittle becomes My Fair Lady and when The Soloist Nathaniel Ayers recovers himself through music. Along the way the facts blur that one movie is based on a true story, the other is fiction since both say something meaningful about beating the odds and personal redemption. Sometimes the distinctions don't matter and sometimes they do.

Few people beat longer odds than Michael Oher, whose life story (the biggest parts) is the heart of The Blind Side. The marketing promos emphasize Sandra Bullock as a comedic southern fried Pollyanna, but not the throwaway kid whose real life - off the football field, and on - gives this material its backbone. It's a story where the distinctions matter.

Fiction and fact reinforce one another in 1986's Hoosiers. It carries one of those "based on a true story" qualifiers that accompany those enhancements tacked onto many films. Even with those elements acknowledged, Hoosiers remains a popular and well-made story of a David -vs- Goliath Smackdown on an Indiana basketball court.

So here's the Smackdown: Deciding whether a movie works better when it leans on the facts, or as fiction "based on a true story."

QUACKDOWN 01.01.10: University of Oregon DUCKS -vs- Ohio State University BUCKEYES

 Ducks Versus Bucks 

Okay, I understand that this breaks the rules of blogging. You're not supposed to mix your messages, readers expect consistent content, stick to what you know, etc., etc. So, this being a movie site, it is wrong-headed and brand off-putting to talk about sports. I know this, and yet I'm helpless. I'm sorry...

It may not be a MOVIE SMACKDOWN but it is definitely a SMACKDOWN (QUACKDOWN?) coming to Pasadena on January 1, 2010.

As a native Oregonian (born in Lincoln City, raised in Hillsboro) and a University of Oregon graduate (schooled in Eugene), I can barely find the words to describe how it felt last night when the Oregon Ducks defeated the Oregon State Beavers in the "Civil War" to earn a ticket to this year's Rose Bowl against Ohio State. All I can really do is show you...

We will soon return you to your regularly scheduled film criticism.  Thank you for your patience...

  See you at the Rose Bowl! Go Ducks!  

A Serious Man (2009) -vs- Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

 The Cool Triumph of Uncool         

The Smackdown. Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers. Three of America’s very Coolest filmmakers have traded in their hip cachet for projects so unhip they might just be cooler than cool. The Coen Brothers go-go back to the desperately unchic seventies with a cast of unknowns, and Wes Anderson plays beautiful havoc with stop-motion furries voiced by unseen, tippy-top-of-their-game megastars Clooney and Streep. And everybody wins.

In This Corner. “A Serious Man” (2009) Forsaking their coolness (Who, Us? Jewish? Cohen without the H, and that missing H stands for Hebe!) and embracing or perhaps attacking/strangling their (until now, well-hidden) suburban Minnesotan Jewboy roots, the Coen Brothers dip into some pretty personal mythology, with heaping helpings of Lot-fueled Biblical metaphor and heavy duty (if hilariously accurate) ethnic stereotyping, coming up with a laugh-out-loud examination of faith and morality and filial obligation and suffering and human frailty and a whole Lot of other Big Ideas usually left to scholars and pedants, not mainstream artsy American filmmakers.

And it is good. (Only after an Academy Award win would the powers that be consent to this risky little venture…and only after that win would the Brothers dare ask for that consent.)

Me and Orson Welles (2009) -vs- My Favorite Year (1982)

 Learn, Baby, Learn 

The Smackdown.  Given the long odds against success, everybody in show biz could use a mentor, somebody to teach them the ropes and send them on their way. In a perfect world those lessons are delivered with loving care and remembered fondly for a lifetime.  In the real world, they tend to be delivered in a way that leaves the mentee as dazed and confused by his/her collision with the mentor as you can imagine. Either way, you learn, and we have two coming-of-age stories to drive the point home. 

The Challenger.  Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, "Me and Orson Welles" tells the story of Richard Samuels, a 1937 vintage teenager who just happens to bump into Orson Welles a week before his ambitious Broadway debut playing Brutus in "Julius Caesar" at this soon-to-be-famous Mercury Theater. Welles, at the time, was only 22 himself (yet the English actor Christian McKay plays him as so much older in this film), but he was the boy genius and he uses Richard up and spits him out by the end. It's a charmer, this film, and we saw it at the Director's Guild theater a couple of weeks ago, and it plays like a love letter to actors and the theater.

The Road (2009) -vs- Testament (1983)

 The Apocalypse Will Not Be Awesome 

The Smackdown.  With films from this past year like "2012" and "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" tearing apart the planet to cheering audiences and huge box office, you'd be forgiven if part of you thought that just maybe the apocalypse when (if?) it comes won't be so bad after all. The truth is that it will be worse than bad, it will be awful, catastrophically so, and there probably won't be a heroic third act resolution among the survivors. No, the survivors in a real end of days will have more on their minds that heroism even if they manage to pull off a little nod in its direction. Both "The Road" (in theaters now) and "Testament" get dirty, showing characters coping with getting by once society disappears on them. 

The Challenger.  Based on Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name, "The Road" doesn't even bother to really tell you what happened. All we know is that at 1:17am one morning, the sky lights up (bombs, asteroids?) and that's all she wrote. This is the telling of two characters really, The Man (Viggo Mortenson) and the Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who are trying to walk their way to the coast, close to a decade after that Minute When Everything Changed. Things are bad all over. Most everyone is dead now, food is all but gone, the animals have died, too, same with the plants. The closest thing to civilization are bands of brutal survivalists and the most common form of human nature being expressed is cannibalism. Why distributors decided to release this film on Thanksgiving Day may go down as one of the most inexplicable calls in movie history. The book has legions of fans and I first experienced it as an audiobook which I listened to on a daily walk through our local green belt. I think of this film in the rhythm of walking but it gets in your head and the day after Thanksgiving Day I simply had to see it at the only local theater playing it.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) -vs- Twilight (2008)

 Why Women Make Bad Choices in the Men They Love 

The Smackdown. In the battle of the varied mythological creations, Vampires have for centuries captured the imagination of people around the world. Novels, films, theatrical productions and poorly-decorated costume shops have enjoyed success based upon their existence, proven or not.   Likewise the Werewolf, natural enemy of the Vampire, whose moonlit howl still sends a tremor down the back of even the most hardened myth-lover. Bringing these two epic creatures together in one film franchise has most of the female population of our planet all in a tizz. Why?  Are the men they encounter in the real world really that bad?

 

The Challenger. Based upon the second of Stephenie Meyers' "Twilight" novels, "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" brings us more teen-angst between heroine Bella and her vampiric love interest Edward. When Edward decides to take himself out of the picture after a potentially fatal attack from one of his blood sucking brethren, Bella seeks solace from her anguish in the company of Jacob, a young Werewolf. "New Moon" broadens the narrative scope of the "Twilight" saga, both in terms of its relationship focus and the action quotient, which is amped up considerably this time around.

Blu-Smack: This Re-Boot's Made for Warpin'

Editor's Note.  Now that Star Trek is out on a three-disc Blu-ray release in time for consumers to express their patriotism during the economic downturn by buying the product for Christmas, we take a moment to re-visit Smackdown ref Beau DeMayo's original review.

 Star Trek (2009) -vs- Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) 

The Smackdown.  Reboots.  A familiar frontier. These are the voyages of the Hollywood business. Now if only I could go reboot the time I bested too many Jager shots and woke up at the campus bus stop twenty minutes before a Physics midterm. Now, it's easy to groan when Hollywood reboots yet another franchise.  Batman.  Hulk.  James Bond.   The list goes on.  Up this year is Star Trek, one of television's most enduring franchises, spawning spin-offs, films, video games, and Trekkies. With such a long history and devote fan base, it's scary to think what a reboot could mean for a franchise most believe reached its prime with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Nevertheless, we boldly go tonight where no smackdown has gone before, with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan locking phasers and photons with the reboot simply titled Star Trek.

The Challenger.  Facing down gospels of Star Trek canon, J.J. Abrams reintroduces the original crew of the USS Enterprise in their fledgling years at Starfleet Academy, centering the film around an arrogant and willful James T. Kirk and an emotionally-conflicted Spock.  But there's not much time for learning with these Starfleet cadets as a Romulan mining ship arrives from the future (of course, it's Star Trek) hellbent on revenge, thus demanding an emergency response from The Federation.  Star Trek benefits from the advances of modern technology and offers a visually-arresting action film.  In keeping with Abrams trademark storytelling, the film grinds its legendary characters through unrelenting plot twists, revelations, and reversals.  A faithful adaptation of a franchise mixed with a little bit of Apple, Star Trek is a summer blockbuster with the thrills and chills to please fans and newcomers alike.

The Blind Side (2009) -vs- Hoosiers (1986)

 Blurring the Lines; Beating the Odds 

The Smackdown. We cheer as Eliza Doolittle becomes My Fair Lady and when The Soloist Nathaniel Ayers recovers himself through music. Along the way the facts blur that one movie is based on a true story, the other is fiction since both say something meaningful about beating the odds and personal redemption. Sometimes the distinctions don't matter and sometimes they do.

Few people beat longer odds than Michael Oher, whose life story (the biggest parts) is the heart of The Blind Side. The marketing promos emphasize Sandra Bullock as a comedic southern fried Pollyanna, but not the throwaway kid whose real life - off the football field, and on - gives this material its backbone. It's a story where the distinctions matter.

Fiction and fact reinforce one another in 1986's Hoosiers. It carries one of those "based on a true story" qualifiers that accompany those enhancements tacked onto many films. Even with those elements acknowledged, Hoosiers remains a popular and well-made story of a David -vs- Goliath Smackdown on an Indiana basketball court.

So here's the Smackdown: Deciding whether a movie works better when it leans on the facts, or as fiction "based on a true story."

2012 (2009) -vs- Independence Day (1996)

 The End of the World As We Know It (Again) 

The Smackdown. "Speak less.. say more" describes my consultant work, but not the efforts of German writer/producer/director Roland Emmerich. He creates entertainment and the bigger, the better. Here's the RE formula: A few people battling something REALLY big (global warming, a mutant reptile, space aliens with very bad intent) and prevailing against long odds. The material can be clunky and derivative, but give Emmerich his due: He thinks big. He followed that recipe to profitable effect with Independence Day in 1996. Critics dismissed the space invasion drama, but audiences ate up the eye-popping special effects to the tune of $817 million in worldwide receipts.

Now, Roland Emmerich serves up his latest imperiled planet drama, 2012. If anything, this movie expands his working definition of big. The estimated budget exceeds $200 million, the special effects credits are a mile long and the disaster is truly universal and non-stop. This movie carries the tag line "We were warned." Here's the Smackdown: Does 2012 prove the idea that more is better, or just more?

The Challenger. 2012 dramatically expands a disputed interpretation of the Mayan long count calendar to its disastrous conclusion. That notion predicts cataclysm on December 21st or 23rd of that year and this movie gets down to business straightaway. Southern California breaks off in pieces, lakes evaporate and the earth's crust is overheating. Scientists blame this on the effect of sub-atomic particles thrown our way from solar flares. Whatever. Into this framework for special effects we meet writer Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), his estranged family, an overbearing White House aide (Oliver Platt), an earnest scientist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and an Obama-like president (Danny Glover). Continental drift, earthquakes and tsunamis are in hyperdrive and no visual cue goes ignored. Your favorite landmarks? History. Magnetic north? Now in Wisconsin. The safest high ground? Tibet.

Things look tough for Jackson Curtis and his family. Do they survive? Do I really have to ask?

Pirate Radio (2009) -vs- Love Actually (2003)

 Love & Music In the Air(Waves) 

The Smackdown. Love, or something like it, is in the air. And British director Richard Curtis seems to want us all to know about it. His penchant for films featuring multiple story-lines and a vast array of characters is well documented, especially with the two films featured today. So with the release this week of "Pirate Radio" across United States cinema screens, we thought we'd put Curtis's latest up against one of his classics.

The Challenger. Largely based on fictitious facts (i.e. movie "facts"), "Pirate Radio" (otherwise known as "The Boat That Rocked" outside of the USA) puts us in the middle of the North Sea, off the coast of England, as a boat holding various radio DJ's broadcast their illegal signal into mainland England to circumvent draconian broadcasting laws preventing them from otherwise playing the newfangled music known as "rock 'n' roll."